My new Addiction!

Okay; so my new addiction is couponing! lol My oldest daughter told me about the show “Extreme Couponing” so I just had to watch it! After the first episode I was hooked! People are getting hundreds of dollars worth of food for FREE? Free is pretty cool in my mind! We are looking at buying a bigger home in the near future so anything else that can save us more money to get there is awesome. I’ve used coupons before but not to the extent that I got much for free or really helped my final cost at the register. My first plan of action was to buy a weekend newspaper which felt very weird to me because I haven’t gotten a newspaper in years! I found 2 coupon inserts and cut the coupons that I would use and looked at local circulars for the upcoming week.

Needless to say I was a bit confused and wasn’t sure what to really do to save money. Then I noticed Rite-Aid has the wellness+ rewards and up rewards which I had never heard of. We always use Rite-Aid for our prescriptions but never really buy anything else there. What I found was if you put some money out there at the beginning it can go a longggg way. 😉 Up rewards are pretty much the same as cash for your next purchase. After the first trip to Rite-Aid I knew it was going to be place I would shop at again and again. I found coupons that I clipped and also printed coupons online at various websites like coupon.com, redplum.com, smartsource.com and coupons from Walmart.com to make my purchases even better! Rite-Aid even has electronic coupons you can add right to your card. =)

The above picture shows my haul for 2 days. I got 3 packages of Carmex, a weekend newspaper, 12 boxes of Yardley soap, 3 tins of Nivea, 2 packages of Hair Tyes, 4 2-Liters of Soda (ya I know naughty naughty, lol but my hubs needs soda sometimes.), 2 packages of Real Medleys Oatmeal, 9 bottles of Purex, 3 bags of Purex laundry packs, 2 bottles of Tide, 4 boxes of cereal, 2 packages of mixed nuts, 2 packs of Floss, and 2 large packages of Toilet Paper. Total value $191.46! After coupons, sales, up rewards from previous trips my total out-of-pocket cost was $56.38! But I got back $48 Up rewards which means all this was for $8.38! Crazy! And I still have $48 to go spend again lol. So the trick to that I see is picking items every sale week that give you the same amount of up rewards of what it costs which means it cancels them out meaning they are FREE! FREE! FREE!

I’m still trying to figure out the whole grocery store thing though. The state I live in and the stores I shop at definitely don’t let you do what the Extreme couponers do! There is no tripling coupons and only one store doubles them and even at that it’s only up to .99 and their prices are so high you’d be better off at Walmart! They even clearly say that you can’t split up your transactions either like I have seen on the show. So I’m still working on how to get better deals at regular grocery stores. I’m also trying to figure out the best way to carry my coupons and all that.

Do you coupon? I would LOVE to hear some tips and tricks that could possibly help me save even more money. =)